Spanish government turns to the Vatican again in bid to exhume General Franco

The Prior of El Valle de los Caídos refuses to allow the exhumation plan to go ahead

The Spanish government’s plans to exhume the mortal remains of General Franco and remove them from the monumental burial and memorial site of El Valle de los Caídos have suffered yet another setback this week, with the flat refusal on the part of Prior Santiago Cantera of the abbey of Los Caídos to allow procedures to be initiated.

At one point Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared confident that the exhumation procedure would be under way before August, but since then one obstacle after another has arisen, not least of them the objections raised by the grandchildren of the dictator who ruled in Spain until his death in 1975. They have demanded a second funeral with full military honours, and that their grandfather’s remains be re-buried in the cathedral of La Almudena in the centre of Madrid, an important tourist attraction where there would be a risk of the Generalísimo being glorified by those who admire his ideology.

At the same time, the Supreme Court has upheld the family’s right to appeal against the exhumation when the government finally approves it, although it has been ruled that there is no reason to halt the process while a decision is being reached on whether the transfer of Franco’s remains is legal or not.

In response to the Prior’s refusal to authorize the exhumation, and to the unwillingness of the Archbishop of Madrid to overrule his decision, the government has now announced that it will be seeking the help of the Vatican, a strategy which proved unproductive in an earlier attempt to ban the proposed re-burial in the Almudena. At the same time, they have pointed out that Santiago Cantera stood as a parliamentary candidate for Franco’s “Falange” party in the general election of 1993 and at the European election the following year.

The Benedictine monks of El Valle de los Caídos run the basilica at the site and are completely independent of any other body in doing so, while the only higher authorities than the Prior are the Abbot of Solesmes, the Benedictine monastery founded near Le Mans in France in 1010, and the Pope.